It's the official teen/tween edition of Hot Tickets. For those yearning for pop culture nostalgia from their teenage years, New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys are getting together at the Verizon Center on June 3 for lots of...

As the Brickskeller prepares to close later this month, we revisit the iconic bar -- once holder of the Guinness World Record for the world's largest selection -- and find that both the good and the bad remain.

Holiday cookies dominated the food front this week, and I anticipate spending a few cold days indoors satisfying my family's craving for seasonal sweets with some of the section's staggering 27 recipes. On the other hand... the issue did give me plenty of reasons to get out of the house too:

Holiday season kicks into gear this week with Duke Ellington's "Nutcracker Suite," a seasonal cocktail class taught by top mixologists, ugly-sweater parties and a ski-themed '80s bash. But there's also hip-hop legends EPMD, a new home for popular all-'90s dance party Peach Pit, Russ Parr and DJ Sixth Sense's "Wrong Songs" party, a whiskey tasting, an appearance by DFA Records stalwart The Juan MacLean, five hours of pure funk at U Street Music Hall, voodoo at Nerd Nite and much more.

After Alex Bollinger left in late October, the kitchen at Urbana had been chugging along without an executive chef. That changed last Wednesday when John Critchley, most recently of Miami's Area 31, took over. Critchley, a 33-year-old native Bostonian, made a name for himself in 2005 when he opened the Bean Town tapas bar Toro.

We know, the questions were not easy. What cereal grain is used to produce injera, the spongy bread that is the staple of Ethiopian cuisine? In what subject did Marion Barry earn a Master's degree from Fisk University? What is...